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Google Dashboard is unveiled revealing just how much information the internet giant stores about its users. Benjamin Cohen asks whether it raises privacy concerns. Google has this morning unveiled the Google Dashboard, a simple way of immediately seeing all of the data the internet giant holds on you and allowing you to delete, if you wish. For years, Google has been under pressure from privacy campaigners due to the huge amount of data the company has stored for many years about nearly every internet user in the world.

Today’s guest author is Deirdre Walker. She retired recently as the Assistant Chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Police. She spent 24 years as a police officer. “Do I have the right to refuse this search?” This is a question I heard many times during my law enforcement career. Often my answer was no. But occasionally it would be “yes,” followed by an admonition to have a good day. For the last half of my career, I would have documented each interaction, whether or not it involved an arrest. I would have written down the nature and length...

I thought it a bit odd that some are claiming all sorts of SSNs and addresses for Obama. So I resurrected an old CD based Phone Directory which supposedly has 250 million entries across the US and Canada compiled in 1997. I searched for all Obamas and all Soetoros. I thought also to search for Dunhams too but there were too many. There were even too many Stanley Dunhams. The list below includes the one that might be Obama's mother. (There were no Stanley Ann Dunhams.) I'm not sure what this means but I provide the list below in the...

Just as Bing is gaining popularity, some disturbingly pro-Microsoft and anti-Apple search results rear their ugly heads. Oh Microsoft, just when we were starting to believe in this thing called Bing, you go messing with the search results. Case in point: a search on Bing for the phrase, "Why is Windows so expensive?" returned this as the top link.... "Why are Macs so expensive." That's right. You're not hallucinating. That was the top response on Bing to a question about the price of Windows.

For more than a year now, rumors of a potential deal between Microsoft and Yahoo have ebbed and flowed. And it looks like the denouement of this epic tale may finally be upon us. A search and advertising deal between the two tech giants is expected to be announced within the next 24 hours, according to All Things D's Kara Swisher, who cites multiple unnamed sources.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The attention of the nation and the world was drawn to the arrest of prominent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Wednesday night when President Barack Obama accused the Cambridge police of acting "stupidly." Obama said he doesn't know all the facts about the arrest last week, but during a prime-time news conference, Obama said blacks and Hispanics are still singled out for arrest disproportionately. Read more....

This is good news:A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers for weapons and explosives; beyond that, the agency is overstepping its bounds, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley said. "The extent of the search went beyond the permissible purpose of detecting weapons and explosives and was instead motivated by a desire to uncover contraband evidencing ordinary criminal wrongdoing," Judge Marbley wrote. In the second case, Steven Bierfeldt, treasurer for the Campaign...

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz told shareholders Thursday that the Internet company had "nothing to say" about any possible deal with software giant Microsoft Corp., and urged investors to remain patient as she attempts to turn the company around. "If we ever have a deal with Microsoft, it will be announced publicly and until we do, we have nothing to say," said Ms. Bartz at Yahoo's annual shareholder gathering in Santa Clara, Calif., her first stockholders meeting since she was appointed CEO early this year. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said ...

The US Supreme Court has ruled that school staff broke the law when they ordered a 13-year-old girl to strip while searching her for painkillers. The Arizona school, which bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs, suspected Savana Redding, then 13, of carrying ibuprofen. After no drugs were found in her bag, she had to remove her clothing, and then move her bra and underwear. However, the court said individuals could not be held liable in a lawsuit. The school principal acted on a tip-off from another student that Savana was carrying ibuprofen. Justice David Souter said: "What was missing from the...

I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled. As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty....

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KTIV) - Sioux City city councilman Aaron Rochester is speaking out about national gun control legislation. He says talks of allowing authorities to search homes for unregistered guns goes against the right to bear arms, and he wants to make sure Sioux City police know it. Aaron Rochester, City Council Member:"I think it's going against constitutional rights, and I think our police department in Sioux City should really know every bit of the second amendment so that they can interpret it and do things according to what our founding fathers meant." Rochester's given council direction to make...

The case of a 13-year-old Arizona girl strip-searched by school officials looking for ibuprofen pain-reliever will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this week. The justices in January accepted the Safford school district case for review, and will decide whether a campus setting gives school administrators greater discretion to control students suspected of illegal activity than police are allowed in cases involving adults in general public spaces. The case is centered around Savana Redding, now 19, who in 2003 was an eighth-grade honors student at Safford Middle School, about 127 miles from Tucson, Arizona. Redding was strip-searched by school...

Supreme Court to weigh strip-searches at schools In an Arizona case, officials were worried about campus safety, while the student felt embarrassment. By David G. Savage April 18, 2009 Reporting from Safford, Ariz. -- When Savana Redding, now 19, talks of what happened to her in eighth grade, it is clear that the painful memories linger. She speaks of being embarrassed and fearful and of staying away from school for two months. And she recalls the "whispers" and "stares" from others in this small eastern Arizona mining town after she was strip-searched in the nurse's office because a vice principal...

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/03/19/20090319copsblog0319.html

Cheyenne, Dakota and Tahoe One of the top-rated Search and Rescue (SAR) dogs is Dakota, an American Pit Bull Terrier. Dakota is owned by Kris Crawford, who has 2 other pit bulls that are also certified SAR dogs! Dakota is so good at what she does, NASA handpicked Kris and Dakota to assist in the recovery of the Astronauts after the tragic 2003 shuttle disaster. Kris and Dakota were also involved in the Laci Peterson investigation. Kris and her team have been involved in many cases and have made national news on several occasions. Cheyenne, Dakota and Tahoe are also...

Two days before NFL player Marquis Cooper took a doomed fishing trip with three friends in Florida Gulf Coast waters, a friend urged him to buy a life-saving device used to locate boats in distress. Cooper hadn't heard of the gadget, an emergency position indicating radio beacon (EPIRB). And he didn't purchase one before his excursion on Saturday, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

The Coast Guard called off its search for three missing football players at sunset Tuesday. The news came after crews combed choppy waters off the Florida Gulf Coast for a third full day since NFL players Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith and a third friend William Bleakley disappeared. Their fishing boat capsized in stormy seas Saturday evening. One of the four on the excursion, Nick Schuyler, survived.

Police have used anti-terrorism powers to stop and search almost 180,000 suspects, it emerged yesterday. Yet only 255 of the individuals they targeted were subsequently detained for terrorist- related offences. The figures suggest that police may be misusing powers granted to them under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 supposedly for use only in extreme circumstances The Home Office statistics, which were released to the Daily Mail under Freedom of Information laws, show a ten-fold use in the power since its introduction. In 2000-01, just 3,583 people were stopped under Section 44. Of these, only one was arrested for...

Download this handy card, warning police officers that if a stop and search is intrusive, unlawful or malicious, you will take action The debate about the use of stop and search – be it protesters or young black and Asian men, be it in the case of stopping knife crime or deterring terrorism – is one that has (understandably, perhaps) been fixed on the police results rather than the times they get it wrong.But it is in the cases where they get it wrong that attitudes towards police are sharpened and the rights we feel we have as citizens practically...

How to do a search: Search functions: 1) Click on "everything" in the "browse by forum" box to show all forums 2) Select the most unique word in the title of the article you want to post. 3) Enter that word alone in the 'search' box, and select 'By title', and hit 'Search' 3a) Direct URL for searching: >> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;s=(your unique word) 4) This will find a duplicate 99% of the time.

CENTERVILLE, Utah — The man escaped with a few cuts to his arm, but the toilet made out much worse. Police say a man's gun fell out of its holster while he pulled up his pants after using the bathroom at a Carl's Jr. restaurant Tuesday. The gun fired when it hit the floor and shattered the commode. A few shards of porcelain cut the man's arm, and a woman in an adjacent restroom who was frightened by the noise reported she was having chest pain. Both people were checked at the scene and released. Police say they confiscated the...

In response to my recent column on patients trusting doctors too much, several readers wrote in about the difficulty of finding or sifting through information on doctors and diseases. Many asked for suggestions, so a couple of weeks ago I contacted several nationally respected leaders in family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, oncology, surgery and anesthesia and asked them to share their advice on researching doctors and diseases. Many of the doctors I spoke to or exchanged e-mail with made commonsense suggestions that were not unexpected. They urged patients to find out which doctors their closest friends really like, to ask...

Many of us already know how much "in the tank" Google is with Obama. Google's CEO first met Obama way back in 2000 and has since had several meetings. It is also true that Google was caught censoring what they deemed negative content against Obama during the election. It will also likely be true that Google will eventually censor information for the Obama administration - this is a no-brainer as they have already done so and are tightly coupled. I am now introducing a new search engine that I personally feel is very good. Some of you may have heard...

EL DORADO, Kan. | The adoptive parents of a missing Kansas boy who failed to report his disappearance nearly a decade ago are considered “people of interest” in the case as authorities expand their search nationwide, a sheriff said Monday. Butler County Sheriff Craig Murphy told reporters no charges would be filed immediately, while investigators focus on finding Adam Herrman. The boy was 11 when he disappeared in 1999 from a mobile home park in Towanda where he lived with his adoptive parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman. “We are not sure what happened to Adam Herrman,” Murphy said. “We are...

Mohamed Shommo, an engineer for Cisco Systems Inc., travels overseas several times a year for work, so he is accustomed to opening his bags for border inspections upon returning to the U.S. But in recent years, these inspections have gone much deeper than his luggage. Border agents have scrutinized family pictures on Shommo's digital camera, examined Koranic verses and other audio files on his iPod and even looked up Google keyword searches he had typed into his company laptop. "They literally searched everywhere and every device they could," said Shommo, who now minimizes what he takes on international trips and...

The U.S. Senate recount took two abrupt turns Tuesday, both boosting the prospects of DFLer Al Franken. Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a combined machine malfunction and human error on Election Day that left 171 Maplewood ballots safe, secure but uncounted until Tuesday's final day of recounting in Ramsey County. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie's office immediately asked county officials to explain what had happened, and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's campaign said it sent its own experts to Ramsey County to review the situation and said it was "skeptical about [the ballots'] sudden appearance." By the end...

President Dmitri Medvedev took advantage of the euphoria in America today to order the deployment of missiles inside Europe as a response to US plans for a missile defence shield. Speaking within hours of Barack Obama's election as the new US President, Mr Medvedev announced that Russia would base Iskander missiles in its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad next to the border with Poland.

Two veteran warriors battling to represent the 12th Congressional District appear locked in the closest race in the district in years. Democratic Rep. John Murtha leads retired Army Lt. Col. William Russell by a little more than 4 percentage points, within the Susquehanna Poll's 4.9-point margin of error. The poll of 400 likely voters was conducted for the Tribune-Review on Tuesday, amid uproar over Murtha's statement that some of his constituents are racist.

There are some Obama photos and quotes I need to get to over the next month. As of right now I can't get to them. Is the DB restoration going to happen pretty soon?

NASHVILLE - State Rep. Mike Kernell said today that he was aware of Internet rumors about his son being the subject of speculation that he accessed the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Asked whether he or his son, a student at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, had been contacted by authorities investigating the break-in of Palin's account, he responded: "Me, no." As far as his 20-year-old son, David, he said: "I can't say. That doesn't mean he has or hasn't (been contacted by investigators)." Kernell, D-Memphis, cited the father-son relationship. He said he had talked to his son...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Five Republican state legislators filed a lawsuit in Alaska state court on Tuesday seeking to block Democrats from investigating whether vice-presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power in firing a state trooper feuding with her family. The lawsuit claims the probe into Palin's July firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan is unconstitutional and politically tainted because it is being managed by Democrats trying to undermine Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Palin, his running mate. Monegan contends he was dismissed because he failed to fire a state trooper who had been involved in a...

Title search is working again... Please make use of it...

Prolific writer Peter Manso, author of, among other books, biographies of Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando, has been indicted on a dozen firearms charges by a Massachusetts grand jury and faces years in prison. Did he brandish a gun in public? Threaten a neighbor with a drive-by shooting? No, the guns were all stored, quite securely, in his locked and alarmed home. In fact, police discovered the weapons only when they responded to a burglar alarm while the writer was away. Either the guns were in plain view -- evidence that Manso expected no legal trouble for their possession --...

Is it just me, or is anyone else finding that when you attempt a Title search on a particular word (and yes, it's more than three letters) the search engine doesn't bring up the most recent threads? For example, when I search on "Hannity," ordered by post time, the most recent live thread that turns up on the results is 8-22-08. I know there was a thread on 8-25-08. When I attempted to search for stories on the recent plot against Obama, an input of the word "plot" in the title search, again ordered by post time, yields nothing newer...

I'm starting to wonder if Barack Obama and Joe Biden drank a little champagne to celebrate their partnership before speaking to the crowd Saturday in Springfield, Illinois. First, Obama introduced his running mate as "The next president."

Delicious.

The Gallup daily tracking poll showed Barack Obama and John McCain tied at 44 percent Friday for the third time in two weeks.

Only a collapse in the global demand for oil can save economies from a supply crisis and crude prices reaching more than $200 a barrel, according to a report out today. Energy expert Paul Stevens says that governments and companies are investing too little to meet future needs and a "supply crunch" will hit within "five to 10 years." His report, for the Chatham House think tank, dispels hopes that the recent 20pc fall in the oil price from its $147.27 peak might herald a return to more manageable levels. "A spike of over $200 is possible," Mr Stevens concludes.

<p>COLUMBUS, Ohio - A death row inmate scheduled for execution says he's too fat to be put to death, claiming executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.</p>

A quick and dirty search of any and all of FreeRepublic thanks to Google 'site:' function. No more excuses... Google results for site:freerepublic.com.

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed during private budget negotiations over the weekend to close the state's $15.2-billion deficit with a temporary one-cent hike in the state sales tax, to take effect immediately, according to Democratic and Republican legislative sources. The proposal, floated in meetings with legislative leaders and their staff, hinges on lawmakers agreeing to spending restraints to control the growth of government and give governors authority to cut programs whenever the state falls into the red. Lawmakers and staffers close to budget negotiations said the governor, who has repeatedly vowed never to raise taxes, would not support the...

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has concocted a remarkable new policy: It reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time laptops taken across the border. A pair of DHS policies from last month say that customs agents can routinely--as a matter of course--seize, make copies of, and "analyze the information transported by any individual attempting to enter, re-enter, depart, pass through, or reside in the United States." (See policy No. 1 and No. 2.) DHS claims the border search of electronic information is useful to detect terrorists, drug smugglers, and people violating "copyright or trademark laws."...

Search site aims to rival Google The Cuil homepage is even more sparse than Google's Former workers at the web giant Google have launched a rival search engine. Called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online. The technology it uses to index the web can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests, say the founders. But analysts believe the new search engine, like many others, will struggle to match and defeat Google. Hard fight Cuil, pronounced "cool", says...

Lest there be any illusions about the desired target audience for Obama’s trip, the foreign media, including the BBC, have been left on the Tarmac. Only American reporters are on board “Obama One” as his plane heads from one country to the next. He will have a 45-minute meeting on Saturday morning with Gordon Brown followed by a press conference, which Obama will conduct on his own outside Downing Street in a blatant departure from the usual protocol. There will be no Brown at his side to spoil the No 10 backdrop for American voters, even though it would be...

Gordon Brown and his fellow world leaders have sparked outrage after it was disclosed they enjoyed a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G8 summit where the global food crisis tops the agenda. The Prime Minister was served 24 different dishes during his first day at the summit – just hours after urging the world to reduce the "unnecessary demand" for food and calling on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food. Mr Brown and his wife Sarah were among 15 guests at the "blessings of the earth and the sea social dinner"....

Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election. His seal featured an eagle emblazoned with his logo, and included a Latin version of his campaign slogan. This was an attempt by Sen. Obama to make himself appear more presidential. But most people saw in the seal something else – chutzpah – and he's stopped using it. Such arrogance – even self-centeredness – have featured often in the Obama campaign. AP The presumptive nominee's presumptive "presidential" seal. Consider his treatment of Jeremiah Wright. After Rev. Wright...

"...Joseph is now asking him about the Free Republic blog. How did he come across it. Well, shorttly after reading the Steyn article in October 2006, which he found “concerning,” he went on the internet to “look for any impact,” ie he Googled it. He found what he was looking for on the Free Republic: the Steyn article, with comments from readers underneath, to the effect that Muslims should be “eradicated,” that they should not be here, etc. We’re working off a printout of a Google search performed today. Porter is up, pointing out that Google searches produce different results...

A US marine has been acquitted of charges that he ordered a cover up of the Haditha massacre, an incident in which 24 Iraqis were killed in cold blood in 2005. Lieutenant Andrew Grayson was declared "not guilty on all charges" by a military courtmartial after his defence accused the prosecution of relying on a botched and politically motivated investigation. The military intelligence official was the sixth of eight accused to be cleared over the controversial incident. The deaths of 24 people in the central Iraqi town ranks as one of the darkest incidents since the 2003 invasion. The killings...

In search of the lost Sahara 05/15/2008 A team of Basque and Sahrawi archaeologists is making the first catalogue of the prehistoric heritage of the Western Sahara. Archaeologists doing some research. Photo: EiTBThe region of Tiris, a vast desert area south of Western Sahara, is the work field of the Basque-Sahrawi expedirion researching the past of this inhospitable place of the planet. A team of Basque archaeologists led by Andoni Sáenz de Buruaga, a professor at the Basque public university UPV, is visiting the Western Sahara for a fifth time. "We presented our research project to the Sahrawi Government in...